From The American Scholar, Unto Caesar: Religious groups that have allied themselves with politicians, and vice versa, have ignored at their peril the lessons of Roger Williams and U.S. history. A review of Head and Heart: American Christianities by Garry Wills (and more). From Zenit, an article on the influence of religion on American politics. A review of The Preacher and the Presidents: Billy Graham in the White House by Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy (and more). A review of Crazy for God: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back by Frank Schaeffer (and more). A review of Judgment and Grace in Dixie: Southern Faiths from Faulkner to Elvis by Charles Reagan Wilson. A review of People of Paradox: A History of Mormon Culture by Terryl L. Givens. A review of Plain Secrets: An Outsider Among the Amish by Joe Mackall. An excerpt from Amish Grace: How Forgiveness Transcended Tragedy by Donald B. Kraybill, Steven M. Nolt, and David L. Weaver-Zercher.

From Inside Higher Ed, who you calling heterodox? Political magazines and mainstream media outlets have recently unearthed a struggle for the very soul of economics. It’s playing out in scholarly journals and in the back corridors of economics departments as lone, embattled researchers resist the stifling free-market doctrine that dominates their field. Who shares wins: Economists are fond of wandering into other academic territories. An excerpt from The Economic Naturalist by Robert Frank. The Experimenter: At 28, Berkeley economist Raj Chetty aligns theories with real-world facts, leading him to surprising conclusions on taxes, investing, and welfare. The Democratic Economist: If a Democrat must be elected president, Obama adviser Austan Goolsbee is the type one would like to have at his or her elbow.

A review of Winning the Right War: The Path to Security for America and the World by Philip Gordon; Containment: Rebuilding a Strategy against Global Terror by Ian Shapiro; and The Silence of the Rational Center: Why American Foreign Policy is Failing by Stefan Halper and Jonathan Clarke. A review of The Terror Dream: Fear and Fantasy in Post-9/11 America by Susan Faludi (and more and more). A review of the “Message to the World on the Sixth Anniversary of 9/11” by Osama bin Laden. Al Qaeda offers one rationale for its actions to Western audiences, but another to Muslims, writes Raymond Ibrahim, editor of The Al Qaeda Reader. Why Osama hates microfinance: Has bin Laden become the first prophet in a new line of Islamic Marxists? Or is he just another would-be dictator searching for specious arguments? Al-Qaeda's forerunner: An interview with Yaroslav Trofimov, author of The Siege of Mecca. A review of The Islamist by Ed Husain.